A Glimpse of the Future
by Bobcat Moran
Summary: As a new generation of robots is constructed, their predecessors sneak in for a glimpse of the future. Chapter 4: Two reploids from Red Alert make a surprising discovery.
1. The Girly Robot

_**Disclaimer:**_ _Forte, the girly-looking robot, and all related characters are property of Capcom._

-o-o-o-

Finally. The old man was _finally_ asleep, and the lab was empty. Normally he'd been free to come and go as he pleased, but this room had been locked, off limits to any robot for months now. Needless to say, Forte had been not-so-patiently waiting for an opportunity to sneak in and see what the doctor was working on. Blasting the door off its hinges would have been the easiest way of getting access, but that would have been noisy, attracting too much attention. He wanted to get a look at whatever was in there by himself. Well, almost by himself, since Gospel had insisted on coming along.

Forte opened up a panel on his chest and pulled out a cord, which he plugged into the access port on the door's lock. As quickly as he could, he scrolled through the possible passcodes. A minute passed. Two minutes. He really hoped that no one would come down the hall and ask what he was doing. Gospel paced in front of the door, tail twitching, with the occasional glare shot in Forte's direction, as if to ask, "What's taking you so long?"

There was a click as the heavy metal door unlocked. "Got it," Forte said. He smiled as he opened the door.

Forte closed the door after Gospel came in, and then carefully picked his way through the maze of cables on the floor, heading towards the lab table. There was definitely something on it. It looked like another robot, but even with his optic sensors adjusted for maximum light sensitivity he couldn't make it out clearly. "Gospel," he said, looking back towards the entrance, where the robotic wolf was sniffing around a pile of armor. "Hey, Gospel, hit the lights, will ya?" Gospel looked around, as though expecting to find a lightbulb on the floor. "On the wall, by the door," Forte instructed. "No, other side. Yeah, there you g—ow!" he yelled, as the lights came on, momentarily overloading his optics.

"Growf?" Gospel inquired.

"'m fine," Forte said, blinking. "Just wasn't expecting you to get the lights on that quick." He looked around the room. "Geez, what a dump." There was the pile of red and white armor that Gospel had been poking around by the door, a stack of blueprints precariously balanced on two coffee mugs over by the computer terminals, a jumble of wires and chipboards in a corner, a mound of empty cardboard boxes, and cables running everywhere. In the center of it all was a lab table with a half-completed robot on it.

He bent over to take a closer look at the robot's face. He poked it a couple times, then propped open an eyelid. "Hey, Gospel, check this out. This robot's got blue eyes." Gospel reared up on its hind legs, propping its front paws on the lab table to see what Forte was talking about. "See? Now, why'd the old man go and do something like that? Blue eyes is like what Rockman and that dumb girl robot have."

"Bwowr?"

"I dunno, maybe Blues, too. I've never seen his eyes, come to think of it. Maybe he doesn't have any, and that's why he wears those stupid sunglasses all the time. If you ask me, I think red eyes are the way to go."

Gospel made an odd whuffing noise, and then got down from the lab table.

Forte closed the robot's eyelid, and stared at the robot, frowning. It was really lifelike. If it weren't for the mass of cables coming out of its stomach and the fact that from the waist down it was still just a metal skeleton, he'd have sworn that Wily had a human lying on his lab table. It even had fingernails.

There was one element about the robot that struck Forte as really weird (well, besides its creepy resemblance to a human). "What's with the hair?" he asked aloud, eyeing the long blond mass which drooped over the back edge of the lab table, pooling slightly on the floor. "It's like a girl or something." But Forte was pretty sure that this new robot was supposed to be male. It looked nearly complete from the waist up, and it didn't seem to have any of those weird chest bumps that females had. He kicked the mass of hair, watching as it limply settled back into place. "Stupid robot will probably trip over it."

Turning from the robot, Forte looked at the computer terminals that lined one wall of the lab. One of them was still on, displaying a long string of computer code. Forte picked his way through the mess on the floor to the terminal. He tapped a few keys, frowned, then tapped a few more. "A computer virus? What's he writing a virus for?" Looking closer, it seemed like Wily intended this virus to infect robots. But why would he . . .

Gospel barked from the pile of armor. "What?" Forte asked irritably. Gospel barked again, nudging a chest plate out from the pile. A huge grin spread across Forte's face. He tripped over a few cables, kicking them out of his way as he half-ran over to pick it up. He looked at the two green jewels in the chest plate, and then back at the unfinished robot. "So," he said, looking down at Gospel, "maybe Wily meant it to be a girl after all." Tossing the chest plate aside, Forte grabbed a red and white boot with gold trim. He held it up against his leg. Boy, that new robot was going to be tall — probably about two meters, which would make it at least a head taller than Forte, even with his helmet fins. Forte scrunched up his face in disgust. He didn't like Wily making robots who were taller than him, even if they were inferior.

Speaking of inferior robots, what kind of weapons was Wily giving this thing? Forte made his way back to the computer terminal and snatched up the blueprints. He sat down in a nearby chair and propped his feet up on the desk next to the keyboard. Leafing through the blueprints, it looked like this was going to be no ordinary robot master. It didn't seem to have any sort of special weapon. No Freeze Cracker or Wild Coil, just a regular plasma buster was its only weapon. Forte got some satisfaction out of noticing that this robot wouldn't have a rapid-fire mode. But, looking at the plasma relays, it might not need it. It looked like the robot's uncharged plasma shots would be roughly as powerful as Forte's fully charged shots.

He looked at the rest of the specifications. A top-of-the-line Hayatom voice synthesizer, micro-fusion fuel tank, highly advanced eye camera, titanium alloy skin, dash system . . . this couldn't be just another robot master. Wily would never put this much effort into one of those. In fact, the only other robot Forte knew of that the old man had worked this hard on was . . . himself. Crap, was this thing going to be his replacement?

It couldn't be. Why would Wily be replacing him, Forte, clearly the best thing the old man had ever built? After all, no other robot had even come close to defeating Rockman, and he was sure that their next encounter would be the last one for the blue shrimp. There wasn't any conceivable reason for getting rid of Forte.

But on the other hand, the old guy was kind of nuts. Who knew what went through his head? Forte looked up at the terminal, at the code for the computer virus. A virus that infected robots — was that how Wily was planning to get rid of him? Swinging his feet back down onto the floor, Forte walked back over to the robot. Well, he couldn't be replaced if the replacement wasn't finished now, could he?

Recalling some of the diagrams on the blueprints, Forte reached around to the back of the robot's head, feeling for a hidden switch. With a soft "pop," a panel on the robot's chest opened. Forte gave the chipboard inside an appraising look, before prying loose several memory chips, strategically rewiring some transistors, and moving around resistors. "There. That oughta keep Wily busy until I can come back with my buster and properly finish the job." He closed up the panel, pulled a few cables loose and replugged them into the wrong sockets for good measure, then sauntered out of the lab, with Gospel tagging along at his heels.

**-owari-**

_**Author's Notes**_

_I think this is almost more of a scene than an actual story. Actually, come to think of it, practically everything I write is more scene-ish than story-ish. Oh, well. Please review. I'll do my best to reciprocate any reviews — that means, you leave me a review, I'll review one of your stories, if I'm familiar with the fandom. Constructive criticism and any thoughts you have on my characterizations, especially of Forte, are very welcome._


	2. The Youngest Brother

_**Disclaimer: **Rockman and all related characters are property of Capcom. I am making nothing off of this fic, unless you count the warm and fuzzy feelings which result from receiving reviews (coughhinthintcough). Apologies to K.K. Likharev and T. Someya._

_**Author's Note: **I'm ignoring any new storyline introduced by "Irregular Hunter X," mainly because I have only the faintest idea what that game is introducing canon-wise.  
_  
-o-o-o-

It had been a long time, but Blues was finally returning to a place that he had only recently started to think of as "home," namely Dr. Light's residence and lab. He hadn't missed Dr. Light -- the old man seemed to be constantly dropping not-too-subtle hints about "fixing" Blues' power supply which, while it wasn't as advanced as what Rock and Roll had, was perfectly serviceable, thankyouverymuch. And Blues was wary of anything which required being shut off, completely unable to do anything while someone else tinkered with his insides.

However, the robot _had_ missed his younger "siblings," especially Rock. Besides, Dr. Light had better equipment than Blues could possibly obtain by himself, and if he could use it, it would make repairing that short circuit in his left buster that much easier.

He knocked on the door, then heard a loud bust of barking, followed by a boy's voice saying, "Rush, quiet down, boy." The door was then opened by Rock, who exclaimed, "Blues!" and then proceeded to almost knock over the elder robot in a huge tackle-hug, with the aid of Rush.

"Hello to you, too," Blues said, trying unsuccessfully to hide a grin at Rock's exuberant greeting.

"Is that who I think it is?" a voice asked from the direction of the kitchen.

"Roll, Blues is back!" Rock yelled.

His sister unit emerged from the kitchen. "Blues, welcome back! How long are you planning on sticking around?"

"A couple days. Not past the end of the week." Blues looked around. "Light's not here, is he?"

"No, he and Auto are at some grant proposal review thing for X."

"Good," Blues said. "Wait a minute. Who's X?"

"Oh, you haven't been here since we started him?" Roll asked.

Blues shook his head.

"Come on, you've gotta meet him." And with that, Rock grabbed hold of Blues' wrist and started to lead him in the direction of one of the rear lab rooms. Roll followed. "X probably isn't going to be his real name," Rock said, chattering as they went. "We're just calling him that until we figure out a good name. I think we should call him Bebop, but Doctor Light said that he didn't like that one."

"That's because it's a dumb name," Roll said, with the tone of someone who's had this argument several times before.

"Is not," Rock protested.

"Is too."

"Is not."

"Is too."

"Is not."

"Is too."

"Blues, tell Roll that Bebop isn't a dumb name."

"Rock, don't name the robot 'Bebop.' It'll have issues when it gets older."

Roll grinned triumphantly. Rock stuck his tongue out at her, then turned to Blues. "Some supportive older brother you are," he pouted, as he paused to open the lab's door. The robots filed inside.

Blues pulled off his sunglasses and cranked up the light sensitivity of his optics to maximum, but he could still just barely make out a shadowy form on the lab table in the middle of the room. "Rock, aren't there any lights in here?"

"Yeah, I'm working on it," the younger robot said. "The switch is on the other side of the ro -- oh!" Roll and Blues heard a metallic-sounding yowl, followed by a crash and an, "Oops, sorry, Tango." The robotic cat streaked out of the room.

"You okay, Rock?" Roll asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. There we go." The fluorescent lighting flickered on.

After his optics had recalibrated and he was no longer seeing a wash of white before his eyes, Blues put his shades back on and took a better look around the room. A bank of computer terminals were along one wall, with blueprints tacked up along another. Bundles of wires were laid out on a lab table, next to another table which had a few pieces of blue armor strewn on top. Several cables snaked their way across the floor and more were hanging from ceiling-mounted hooks. In the middle of it all was a lab table with an unfinished robot. Rock stood beside it. "Wanna see? He's really neat."

Blues' first impression was that the robot looked like his and Rock's older brother. Its hair was short and dark brown. The robot's build was much more . . . well, for lack of a better word, mature looking. If it was human, Blues would've placed it at about seventeen years old. There was an angular aspect to its features, as opposed to the more soft, rounded features of Rock, Roll, and himself. It would also be taller than any of them -- at least a head taller than Rock, probably more, although still on the short side for a full-grown human.

But what struck Blues the most about X was that, at least on the finished bits, he looked practically human. There were all sorts of little details the new robot had which the three robots looking at him lacked. Fingernails, for one. The robot also looked like he had an actual muscular structure underneath his skin, for all that he'd be powered by servos and hydraulics, not muscle fibers and nerve impulses.

Speaking of skin, Blues gently peeled back a bit of the robot's artificial skin from an unfinished portion on the left leg. "Hey, Rock, how does tactile feedback work on this guy? He doesn't have the transistor web that we have."

"You've heard about Likharev's work on nanowire crossbars? Doctor Light based the new system on that. He'll have a lot more sensors per square centimeter than we do, especially on his hands" Rock said.

"Wow. Nice." Blues looked at the robot's palms and noted the lack of fingerprints. Blues was also willing to bet that, like Rock, Roll and himself, this robot had several hidden access panels throughout its body for maintenance purposes, so the robot wouldn't look perfectly human from the outside if anyone looked close enough. It was still well beyond anything he had ever seen, though.

"What do you think?" Rock asked.

"Very lifelike," the older robot said, gently poking the unfinished robot in the arm. "Light really went all out on this, didn't he?"

"Tell me about it," Roll said. "He's even going to be programmed with that Independent Whosa-whatsit."

"Independent Whosa-whatsit?"

"Independent Data Acquisition Protocol. He'll be able to learn anything," Rock said.

"So what?" Blues asked, wandering across the room to look at the armor pieces. "We can learn stuff, too."

"No, I mean _anything_. He'll develop his own personality, too."

"So he won't have any limits on his personality matrix. Huh, that's nice."

"No, he won't have a personality matrix."

Blues looked at Rock as though he had just declared that he was going to join Dr. Wily. "Rock, that can't work."

"Yes, it does! It's some sort of infinitely flexible programming thing. Even I don't understand it all the way, but he won't have any pre-installed modules except for basic motor and language."

"Sounds crazy to me. What's with all these armor designs?" Blues asked, flipping through a stack of blueprints next to the pieces of blue armor. "Hover jets, dash boots, recharge helmets -- I thought Light was a pacifist. This isn't going to be a fighting robot, is it?"

"No."

"Then what's all this? It sure isn't for you, unless you've grown a few centimeters and you didn't tell me."

"Well, he's not _supposed_ to be a fighting robot, but sometimes . . . sometimes things happen," Rock said.

"Like what?"

"Well, I was never supposed to be a fighting robot, was I? But I needed to become one."

"Isn't that dangerous, equipping this robot with weapons? I mean, you said that he's going to be totally free to develop his own personality. What if he turns out to be a homicidal maniac?"

Roll paused in flattening out a cardboard box from a pile in the corner. "That's what the thirty year diagnostic period is for."

"Thirty year diagnostic period?" Blues asked.

"Uh-huh. That's to make sure he wakes up with a good moral conscience," Rock said.

"Thirty _years_?" Blues repeated.

"Well, it's very complex, and --"

"Rock, do you have any idea how incredibly long that is? Even I'm not that old!"

"But it takes a long while to sc--"

"And what about Light? He's not going to be around then."

Rock suddenly stopped trying to talk over Blues, clamming up immediately at the mention of his creator's mortality.

"Rock? Hey, kiddo, I didn't mean to hit a nerve there." Blues reached out and tentatively patted his brother robot on the back. Rock glared at him, and bolted out of the room. "Rock!" Blues called after him. He went out into the hall, Roll anxiously following. There was no sign of Rock. "Roll, you go and take the living area; I'll search the lab." Roll nodded and headed off in the direction of the residential portion of the building.

Blues finally caught up with Rock in a dusty back storage room. "Hey, Blue Boy," Blues said when he spotted Rock.

"Go away," came the grumpy reply, although Rock made no movement to scoot away when Blues sat down next to him.

"Sorry about that," Blues said. "Is the old man not doing so well these days?"

"Why would you care? You hate him."

"Rock, I don't hate him."

"You sure act like it," Rock accused.

"I don't hate him," Blues repeated. "We just don't get along very well, that's all." Rock didn't respond. Blues turned to face Rock. "That new robot -- X or Bebop or whatever his name is -- we can't let him wake up all by himself now, can we?"

Rock shook his head 'no.' "He'll be lonely."

"Well, we'll just have to be there for him." Rock lifted his head up. Blues continued, "You, me, Roll, hey, maybe even Auto."

"And Rush," Rock added.

"Yes, Rush, too."

"Don't forget Tango and Beat."

"And Tango and Beat."

"Oh, and Eddie."

"Yes, Rock, they'll all be there. We can even invite Kalinka and Doctor Cossack. It'll be like a big party, welcoming our littlest brother into the world."

"That'd be nice," Rock said. "Maybe we'll even be friends with Forte by then, so he can come, too."

Blues rolled his eyes behind his shades. "Sure, whatever. Tell you what, you can invite everyone, since you seem to have such a good idea of who should come. Roll can bake a cake or something."

"What about you?"

"Me? I'll do the decorations."

"What sort of decorations?"

"I don't know. Balloons, streamers, maybe. Hey, we've got thirty years to plan this, you know."

"Yeah," Rock said. "We should be able to come up with something really good by then."

Blues nodded. "Uh, hey, Rock, do you mind if I use some of the lab equipment? I short-circuited my left buster a couple days ago."

"A couple days ago? And you haven't done anything about it?" Rock asked, incredulous. "Oh, come on, we're taking care of this right now." With that, Rock dragged Blues off in the direction of the repair lab.

-owari-

_Thanks for reading. I will try to reciprocate reviews for those who write in fandoms I'm familiar with. _


	3. The Replacements

**Disclaimer: **All characters are property of Capcom. I'm not making a single red cent off of this. Or green cents. Or purple cents. Or even puce cents.

-o-o-o-

POWER CELLS AT 98.7 % CAPACITY  
99.2 % . . . 99.6 % . . . 100 %  
RECHARGE COMPLETE

_Finally_, Blues thought. He set down the issue of _Modern Robotics_ that he'd been reading and reached behind him, unplugging himself from the wall socket.

He glanced at the clock on the wall. 2:00 AM. The lab was dark and silent, except for the high-pitched hum of computer monitors and the occasional grinding of a hard disk. He looked around the room at the silhouetted outlines of the six nearly complete industrial robots. He'd been out doing some field testing today with Dr. Wily on something that the scientist had called an "Ice Slasher." When Blues had jokingly asked if the Antarctic exploration robot was going to be attacking penguins with it, Wily had yelled at him. That seemed about par for course these days; Wily seemed to have an increasingly short fuse the closer the robots got to completion. Dr. Light said that Albert always got this way when he was working on big projects. Blues said that if that was the case, Wily could work on big projects by himself.

Blues walked into the lab room next door, where the two domestic models were. Dr. Light had dubbed them "Rock" and "Roll" and told Blues that they would be like his younger brother and sister. Rock would be helping Dr. Light and Dr. Wily around the lab, while Roll would be taking over cooking and cleaning.

The idea of having someone else around to do the cleaning was certainly appealing to Blues, and it probably was a good idea to have a robot actually programmed to cook. He'd tried cooking a meal once, but after serving up nearly raw green beans, soggy rice that made disturbing "slurp" noises if poked, and chicken that was oversalted and an unappetizing shade of gray, the short-lived experiment of letting Blues cook ended. Dr. Light had gone through considerable trouble to make sure that Roll would have a sense of taste, so she would be able to tell if she was heading into culinary disaster territory.

He flicked on the light switch, squinting as his optics recalibrated to the light level. Both of the robots lying on lab tables were nearly completed. They'd probably be ready for activation by next week at the latest. Roll had even already been dressed in a red sundress, and if it weren't for the fact that she had a cable dangling from an access port in her arm, it would be easy to mistake her at first glance for a human girl. Blues didn't have much experience with actual human girls, but he was fairly certain that Dr. Light had designed her to look like a younger human girl, since she didn't have those chest bumps that older girls and women had.

Rock was a bit farther behind than his sister. A cable dangled from an access port in his arm as well, but unlike Roll, his cable was plugged into a computer terminal that was in the middle of verifying the personality matrix data that had been uploaded earlier that day. Blues glanced at the readout. There were six terabytes left to check, which meant that the verification process would probably take the rest of the night.

A sudden temptation came over Blues to pull out the cable, which would interrupt the data flow and mean that the whole matrix would have to be reuploaded, delaying the robot's activation by at least one more day. Roll seemed like she'd be all right, but Rock Ö well, Blues wasn't really looking forward to meeting him. Now that the prototype was old news, he wasn't accompanying his creators to conferences and lectures the way he once had, and most of his time was now spent helping out around the lab. If that was going to become Rock's job, what was Blues supposed to do?

Add to that the fact that Rock was quite obviously based on Blues' basic design. Like Blues, the two household robots would be far shorter than an average human adult, both in order to cut down on materials cost and also because a more compact body shape was less of a strain on power and gyroscopic systems.

There was also the fact that the doctors had made adjustments to the new robot's power circuitry and personality matrix so as to avoid problems they'd had with their prototype. Without actually announcing it directly, they seemed to be building what was basically a new and improved version of their first humanoid robot.

All in all, Blues was pretty sure that he'd get along better with Roll.

Still, it wouldn't be fair to do anything that could mess up Rock's programming. Replacement or not, he was completely helpless right now, and pulling the cable out would be a cheap shot. Not to mention that either Light or Wily would notice it, and their list of suspects would be extremely short. Facing the wrath of Wily and a general air of silent disapproval from Light wasn't something Blues wanted to deal with. Besides, what was one day, more or less? It would all be the same in the end.

Surely the doctors had some idea of what they would do with their prototype after the new models were completed. That was what Blues kept telling himself, anyway. If they didn't, well, Blues knew full well what happened to old, obsolete robots which had outlived their usefulness. That was a fate he wanted to avoid at any cost.

Blues glanced over at the screen that showed the progress of Rock's verification, taking in the file names that scrolled by too fast for any human eye to read. "Justice." "Compassion." "Peace." "Friendship." Obviously Dr. Light had been the one to put this together. The new robot would be nice, if nothing else. Blues nodded. He would give the new robot a chance.

Looking up at the clock on the wall, Blues noted that it was nearly time for the sun to start coming up. If he was quiet about it, he could sneak up onto the roof to watch the sunrise. He turned off the lights, and left the next generation robots as he had found them.

-owari-

_Thanks for reading. Please leave a review on your way out. Constructive criticism is welcome, and I'll do my best to reciprocate reviews._


	4. The Discovery

_**Author's Note:**_ _This is an odd little theory of mine. For those of you who are averse to OCs, my apologies. You might want to go read something else, either by me or by any of the fine authors linked to in my "favorite authors" or "favorite stories" section._

_Constructive criticism and other remarks are always welcome._

-o-o-o-

Kalinka stirred her hot chocolate. She knew full well that it was far too early for any sane person to be awake, but she hadn't been able to sleep and figured that sitting sleepless in the kitchen with a mug of her favorite beverage was just as good, if not better, than lying sleepless in her bed, sans chocolate.

A flash of light and the unmistakable "blip" of a teleporting robot came from the darkness of the next room. None of the Cossack robots were out, and they weren't expecting any visitors. Kalinka grabbed a heavy cast-iron pan. It probably wouldn't be that helpful against any enemy robot, but maybe it would be sturdy enough to deflect plasma shots, at least. She gripped the pan tightly with both hands and edged toward the doorway.

"Kalinka, put that thing down," a deep, familiar voice said from the next room.

"Blues?" she asked, relaxing her grip on the pan.

The robot walked into the light seeping in from the kitchen. "What were you going to do? Try and whack me over the head with that if I attacked you?" he asked, indicating the pan with a tilt of his head.

"Something like that," Kalinka said sheepishly.

"Well, it's good to see you, too."

"Oh, Blues, I wouldn't hit you with a frying pan."

"I know. Listen, I can't stay long. Can you give this to your dad?" Blues handed Kalinka a disc labeled "The Best of Perry Como."

"Perry Como?" she asked.

"No, of course not. Let's just say it's a little something to even the playing field." With that, Blues teleported out in a blip of red light.

Kalinka looked at the disc, then at where Blues had just been standing. She shrugged, then returned to her hot chocolate, which was, much to her dismay, now more along the lines of tepid chocolate.

-o-o-o-

_Many years later_

"This is insane. I'm going to freeze to death out here."

"It's not that cold. Look, the sun has been shining all day."

"But the sun isn't warm."

"What are you talking about? Of course the sun is warm, otherwise it wouldn't be the sun."

"But not at this latitude. I'm not designed to operate under these conditions. I can feel my fluids congealing. Ini, if I freeze solid, tell Red that I died a hero, okay?"

"Gear, you're gonna die of a buster shot through the head if you don't shut up."

"But it's _cold_. And barren. A cold, barren wasteland. I thought the terraforming was supposed to be fixing that."

Ini sighed. "For someone who's supposed to be such an expert with antique technology, you sure don't know much about history. Siberia was like this even before the Eurasia incident."

"Was it this cold?"

"It's called winter. You know, that season where the earth's axis tilts away from the sun and temperatures drop? Now hold up, I need to take another satellite reading."

Gear bounced in place impatiently while Ini stood stone still for several seconds. "What's taking so long?"

"There's not as many satellites here as in the more populated areas. It's hard to get a good recep— there." He turned slightly to the left and pointed. "We've gotten a bit off course, but not too bad. That place should be about another half a kilometer to the southwest."

Shading his eyes against the setting sun, Gear squinted in the direction Ini was pointing. "Oh, yeah, I think I might see a building or something out there. Good, I can't wait to get indoors."

Ini readjusted the pack he was carrying and decided against mentioning that wherever it was they were going, it was unlikely that it was heated.

-o-o-o-

The sun was nearly below the horizon by the time the two reploids arrived at their destination, which turned out to be a nondescript, small concrete building.

"This is where they got those anomalous readings?" Ini asked, looking at the building skeptically. "It doesn't look all that anomalous to me."

"Sure it's anomalous. It's a sign of civilization," Gear replied. He trotted up to the door and squinted at the lock. "Ancient civilization. Look at this lock — it's completely mechanical." A shot whizzed by Gear's head, shattering the lock. "Hey, I was examining that!" he exclaimed.

"You said you couldn't wait to get inside," Ini said, retracting his buster. "Lock's gone. Now we can go in."

The doorway opened onto a dark staircase. A distant generator whirred into life as the reploids entered, and a series of overhead lights flickered on. "There must be a motion sensor somewhere around here," Gear mused. "Nice. That means we won't have to dig out our lights."

"Yeah, well, it could also mean that whatever's down here is still operational, and it might not be friendly," Ini said. "I'll go first. The last thing we need is to run into an antique security system and have you try to analyze it while it tries to kill us at the same time."

The stairs seemed to go on forever, burrowing their way down dozens of meters below the surface. "It's getting warmer," Gear noticed out loud.

"Mm," Ini grunted. "We're probably deep enough that it's at a constant temperature year round. About three degrees celsius, if I'm calibrated right."

Another door waited at the bottom, this one with another mechanical lock. Ini groaned with exasperation, but let Gear try and pick it open. "How often do you get the chance to deal with such craftsmanship?" Gear pointed out as he twirled the dials, ear pressed to the door so he could hear tumblers click into place. "You don't just destroy something like this. Especially not when it's so easy to get through without breaking it."

The door gave an audible "click" as it opened into a large room full of humanoid figures. "What are they?" Ini asked, staring around the room.

"They're old mechaniloids," Gear said, awestruck. "They've got to be more than a hundred fifty years old."

"Weird looking, aren't they? Look at this one. It's got some sort of chute on its head."

"And this one," Gear said, pointing at another. "Poor thing didn't even have proper hands, just these drill things. They must have been industrial robots of some sort."

"I'd hate to see what sort of industry this skull guy was in," Ini said, looking at a skeletal robot.

"Um, mortician, perhaps?"

"Hey, there's another door here," Ini said. "It's got a proper lock on it, though. Do you want to try hacking it, or can I just blast through?"

"No, don't blast it!" Gear said. "If there's anything like this on the other side, I don't want you to damage it." He looked at the lock. "Oh, circuits, I don't even know if I have the right cables for this." He rummaged around in his pack, pulling out cables, converters, and data drives. One cable got a long, appraising look before Gear said, "Nah," and added it to the growing pile on the floor beside him. "Ah, this might work," he finally said, pulling out a cord with a bristly-looking plug on the end. "SonicPort might be able to interface with this. I hope it does." A matter of seconds was all it took. "1024-bit encryption. What a joke," Gear said, shoving things back into his pack.

The door stuck in the frame and required a good shove from both reploids before it ground open. This room was smaller than the last, and everything was draped with dropcloths. Ini pulled one off, revealing what looked like a sleeping capsule. Gear pulled off another sheet, dragging a pile of papers off a desk which had a computer sitting on it.

"Nice," Ini said, looking at the mess on the floor. "You're picking that up."

Gear didn't seem to be listening. "Hey, there's someone in here," he said, looking into the capsule.

"Whoa, look at him," Ini said.

Gear scanned over the robot. "I know, he looks like a reploid, doesn't he? Something this old probably won't be anything like us, though. He might not even be able to think for himself."

"An old mechaniloid, you think?" Ini tapped on the capsule's glass.

"Yeah, probably." Gear sat down at the computer terminal that was hooked up to the capsule and started looking for a power switch.

"I dunno. I mean, there are some reploids that are really ancient. I heard that Megaman X is over a hundred years old."

"And I've heard that he's three meters tall and can take out twelve Mavericks with a single shot, blindfolded," Gear replied while fumbling around the back of the terminal. "I saw him once. The guy's a shrimp and kind of wimpy looking as well. All those stories about him are probably just Hunter propaganda. Hey, I think I got it!" He clicked a switch, and the terminal emitted a high-pitched hum as it warmed up.

A monitor flickered on next to the terminal. A middle-aged woman, blond hair pulled back into a bun, appeared on screen. "Segonya chevertoe augusta," she said. Gear's internal translation system raced to figure out what language she was speaking, and managed to determine it was Russian just in time to hear, "… given to my father by Blues, and provided an operating system advanced enough to control the nanite network without loss of function."

Ini peered over Gear's shoulder. "I think my translator's running all right, but I'm still not understanding what she's talking about."

"Shh, shh!" Gear shushed him, staring at the screen wide-eyed.

"Fine," Ini muttered, rolling his eyes. He rifled through some of the papers on the floor. They appeared to be some sort of legal documents. Judging by the underlining and copious notes in the margin, something called the "Artificial Intelligence Regulatory Act" had been heavily scrutinized. He glanced over at Gear again. The research reploid was looking through other files on the computer now and making little, "Ooooh!" noises.

Ini went over the capsule again. No matter what Gear said, the robot in there _did_look like a reploid. The grey and navy armor accented with red stripes wouldn't look out of place in Red Alert or even the Hunters. Orange hair splayed out behind the robot's head, which, combined with the extremely human-like features of his face, only contributed to Ini's feeling that he was looking at something that was at a level beyond the industrial robots in the previous room. Those robots had been well made, from what Ini could tell, but they were also obviously the products of another era. Just the fact that this robot got his own room seemed to speak of his uniqueness.

"Ini, hey, Ini," Gear said.

"What?" Ini turned around to see Gear frantically motioning him over to the computer.

"You're not going to believe this. That robot over there. It actually is a reploid," Gear confided.

"Well, yeah, anyone can see that," Ini said.

Gear gave him a withering, who's-the-expert-here look. "No, no, but he's not just any reploid. He was made sometime before X was activated, but not by Light. By that lady in the video. She made this amazing reploid, only she couldn't do anything with it because of the Artificial Intelligence Regulatory Act."

Ini scanned over the papers he was holding. "You mean this thing?" he asked, holding out the heavily marked packet.

"Yeah," Gear said, flipping though it. "There were these big robot rebellions back in the 21st century, and they figured the best way to stop it was to ban the manufacture or ownership of any robot that could think for itself."

Ini looked horrified.

"You didn't know about that?" Gear asked. "They say that's why it took so much longer than it should have for reploids to be developed. People had to do stuff in secret, like this." He indicated the room with a sweep of his arm. "She — the video lady — knew that the statute was set for review sometime in the '60s, and I guess she was hoping that it'd get repealed, but in case it didn't, she left all this so if someone came upon it, they'd know what it was all about."

"So we've got an ancient reploid on our hands here?" Ini said, glancing at the capsule.

"Wait, I haven't told you the best part. This reploid can alter his DNA structure without compromising his cognitive systems."

"And in normal talk that means…?"

"He can shapeshift. This reploid can change shapes."

"Red is going to burst a circuit when he finds out about this."

Gear grinned. "You bet he will. Come on, help me get a teleportation lock on this guy and we can get out of here."

-owari-


End file.
